Yitzchok-Leibush Peretz.
Part One – Origins
We begin this story with the origin of the surname. So, the surname Peretz (or in another transcription – Peres(ts) or Peretz) comes from the Hebrew word – פרץ (Peretz), the meaning of which can be transferred as – flow, break, catastrophe. This word comes from the verb לפרוץ (lyfroz) – to break through, rush, rush in. It was by this name – Peretz – that one of the twins born to Tamar by Yehuda was named in the Torah. As the reader remembers, the first hand of one of the twins showed up during labor, on which the midwife tied a red thread, so as not to confuse which of the twins was the elder. “But he had hardly taken his hand, when his brother came out.” And the midwife exclaimed, “How did you get through? That’s when they named him Peretz.
Peretz, that is, the one who broke through. It seems to us that a rather deep, both symbolic and mental meaning is originally embedded in this name, which later became the surname of the family to which this essay is dedicated.
It was from Peretz that the famous King David traced his lineage. A man of incomprehensible courage, Yashavam, who fought for David, also came from the family of Peretz. The Megilat Rut states “…and this is the record of the house of Peretz,” thus emphasizing that it is Peretz who stands at the head of the tribe of Yehudah. And later Ataya ben Uzziah led 468 warriors from this tribe that returned from Babylonian captivity (and as it is known not all captives wanted to return to their homeland) and settled in Jerusalem.
Part Two – Spain
“Peretz(s)” became the surname of one of the most famous Spanish Jewish families of Cordoba and Seville. It is worth noting that Jews in general have lived on the Iberian Peninsula since long ago, many centuries before the Spaniards arrived there.
In ancient Sagunta (now Murviedro – from the Spanish “Murie veteres” “old walls”), located in Valencia, there was even a tombstone with the inscription: “Here is buried Adoniram, the servant (dignitary) of King Solomon, who came to collect taxes and (here) died. We know from the TANAH that Adoram (Adoniram) is an actual historical person; he was the chief tax collector in the time of King Solomon. This inscription means that either this part of the Iberian peninsula was a vassal of Israel almost a thousand years before the new era, or was already so populated by Jews that they were paying tax to their king. And this was almost 1,300 years before the Punic Wars when Hannibal first conquered the Iberian Sagunt (Murviedro) and about 400 years before the Babylonian captivity.
The next wave of Jews to arrive in the Iberian Peninsula began after the destruction of the First Temple. The Peretzes, as well as other famous families such as the Ibn Daudes (or “Ben David” from Abraham ha-Levi ibn Daud of Toledo) and the Abrabanels, lived in the vicinity of Seville long before the first appearance of the Visigoths on the Iberian Peninsula. Their ancestors apparently lived in Toledo, which was built by the Jews immediately after the Babylonian captivity. By the way, the first mention of this family in the Spanish Christian chronicles of Castile dates back to the pre-Hispanic period.
The Perets have had their coat of arms since ancient times, which depicts a lion standing on its hind legs with a crown on its head. The lion is the symbol of the tribe of Jehudah and its head, the Peretz.
Many of the prominent members of the Peerets family, by no means all, became Marranes.
This is how Brockhaus and Ephron explain the term: “Marrans” are “secret Jews who lived on the Iberian Peninsula. Although the most liberal Christians have tried to derive the word itself from the New Testament saying “maran atha” (Our Lord has come), in Spanish it means “the accursed,” “the godless,” “the banished,” and most often, in common parlance, “the pig. In Portuguese, as Brockhaus and Efron point out, it “serves as a swear word applied to Jews because they do not eat pork. This nickname was applied to those Spanish Jews who “adopted Christianity under compulsion or just for show”, as a result of the cruel persecutions of 1391, and then 1490s. The expulsion of the Jews from Spain and the brutal persecution of the Marranos are well known and have left their bitter mark on Jewish history.
These events naturally affected the famous family of the Perets. At the first opportunity, the Perets, both Marranos and Jews, fled from Spain. In the middle of the 16th century, a large number of Marranos of this family made their way to Latin America, to such countries as future Peru, Argentina, Honduras, Colombia, Puerto Rica and Chile.
Here are just a few of the prominent members of this lineage:
Antonio Peretz is a rich negociant from Zaragoza. Marran. Secretly, together with his family, practiced Judaism. In 1487, he was persecuted by the Inquisition. He fled Spain. The fate of his sisters, who had not had time to leave Spain, is terrible: Beatriz Peretz (wife of the famous physician Alfonso de Rivera) and Leonor Peretz (wife of Garcia Lopez) were publicly burned in Zaragoza.
Juan Peretz was a marran, financial advisor to Queen Isabella. He was a poet and a scholar. He was at one time Isabella’s confessor. Then, in the midst of the Inquisition, he withdrew from the court and became practically a hermit in a Franciscan monastery. After some time he became Prior (or Father Superior) of this community of friars. Here he first saw Christopher Columbus, who was brought to him for acquaintance. By the way, Columbus himself was perceived by most of the Spanish world of that time at best as a fool, at worst – as an insane lunatic. The idea of sailing to India (and even in the opposite direction from India), for which he sought funding, seemed to all at least ridiculous, if not insane. And the very origin of Columbus was very suspicious at the time. And his secret intentions to save the Jews were generally guessed by a few people, and that only by those who trusted him, among whom there were only Jews or Marranos.
Juan was in fact the first and most ardent supporter of Columbus’ ideas. In fact, it was thanks to Peretz that he was eventually able to make his voyages. Columbus wrote in one of his letters that almost only a lazy man did not ridicule his idea at that time. Before meeting with Peretz, full of disappointment, Columbus was about to go to France to try to interest King Charles VIII in the idea of his voyage. The meeting with Juan served to keep Columbus in Spain. It was Peretz who introduced him to the royal palace and gave him a private audience with Isabella. It is also known that Peretz, who dreamed of leaving Spain, was going to travel with Columbus, which he did unexpectedly for the whole court, joining the second expedition of Columbus in 1493. He sailed with him to Haiti. There he founded the first monastic brotherhood in Santo Domingo, the current capital of the Dominican Republic… After which he disappeared. No trace of him has ever been found. It’s not even known if he ever returned to Spain. What is known is that he died in 1513, but it is not known where.
Manuel Batista Peretz is a Marran. Secretly practiced Judaism. Together with the Conquistadores sailed from Spain and arrived in Peru. He settled in Lima. Became one of the richest settlers in the New World. His fortune would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars today. He was the owner of the royal palace in Lima, which still bears his name today. In 1639, the Inquisition caught up with him. He was publicly burned in January of that year. Manuel’s numerous descendants were among the most aristocratic and prosperous families in Peru. (It is most likely that both the Peruvian ambassador to the USSR in 1970, Javier Parez(ts) de Cuello – the future Secretary General of the UN (from 1982 to 1992) and the President of Peru (from 1985 to 1990 and from 2006) – Alan Garcia Parez(ts) – are descendants of the same Marran family).
Luis Nunez Peretz is a Marran. He fled Spain and settled in Mexico, where he was condemned by the Inquisition in 1642 for returning to Judaism. Members of his family who remained in Spain were also condemned in 1680 for returning to Judaism. The Madrid tribunal sentenced Isabel Peretz, 26, Antonio Peretz, 33, and María López Peretz, 70, to be burned.
José Martí – whose full name is José Julián Martí y Párez. The famous José Martí, considered the “apostle of the revolution”, after whom the squares and streets of modern Cuba are named, was born in 1853. His mother, Leonor Peretz, was born in the Caribbean Islands in the family of an artillery officer – Antonio Peretz from the same Marrano family. (By the way, the names of this family surprisingly coincide with the names of the family of a negociant from Zaragoza, who fled Spain in 1487.) Jose Marti, the “educator of peoples,” as Cubans write about him “is considered one of the most outstanding thinkers of the American continent. His revolutionary social ideas and the depth of his anti-colonialist views are still contemporary today.” Despite these statements, José Martí was quite far removed from the views and ideas of today’s Cuban communists. He was first and foremost a poet and writer. He lived for 42 years and wrote 27 volumes of his works. He fought for Cuban independence from Spain and was exiled from there to Spain. He was sentenced to imprisonment and hard labor, but ended up graduating in Madrid with a degree in law and in Zaragoza with a degree in philosophy and philology.
His personal life did not work out, his wife left him together with their son. He wrote about himself: “Love for me is a feeling so powerful, so absolute and extraterrestrial that until now I have not met a woman on our densely populated earth, to whom I could offer it in its entirety. What a longing to feel myself the most alive among the living, transfused with unfading tenderness and infinite loyalty in the stuffy air, amidst unbearable shallowness and monotonous impersonality, in the emptiness that squeezes my body and oppresses my spirit within its bodily shell… Life is a torment to me.” He lived in France, worked in Mexico as a journalist and taught at a university in Guatemala. He composed poetry and wrote about literature, painting and politics. Then came to Cuba and was deported again to Spain, after which he lived in the U.S. for 15 years, served as consul to Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina, formed the “Cuban Revolutionary Party,” inspired a tiny group of revolutionaries, landed in Cuba and died in the first battle of Dos Rios in 1895…. He once wrote “How I wish I could ride lightning to keep up everywhere…”.
He quite accurately, romantically, and with his usual affectation, formulated and expressed the basic Latin American idea that “our America was formed neither by Rousseau nor by Washington, but by itself …. (and therefore it is impossible) to govern a peculiar people of a peculiar and explosive character by means of laws inherited from four centuries of their free application in the United States or from nineteen centuries of monarchy in France. No Hamiltonian decree can stop the steppe stallion. No phrase of Sayes can dilute the thickened blood of the Indian race.” Although he was regarded in his day (especially in Spain) as one of the most radical revolutionaries, his vocation was literature. This is evident in his attitude to language: “There is something plastic in language, a word has its own visible body, its own laws of beauty, its own perspective, its own light and its own shadows, its own sculptural form and its own colors. All this can only be comprehended by gazing into words, turning them this way and that, weighing them, caressing them, polishing them. In every great writer is hidden a great painter, a great sculptor and a great musician” This is also evident in his poems, which are close in spirit to Shakespeare’s sonnets:
“They want, O my sorrow, that I should tear
From thee the veil of natural beauty,
That I should prune my senses like bushes,
And weep only into a lace handkerchief.
That in a dungeon of ringing languish
My verse which thou hast given.
Life-giving simplicity deprived,
It withers like a plucked flower.
No, it won’t be like that!
And let the actresses
Learn their sighs by heart,
Picture-perfectly down on the scaffolding.
The soul doesn’t divide stage and backstage,
Blush does not brighten up the sadness
And, falling down, does not remember about her hair…. (translated by V. Stolbov)
Another member of the Peratz family, Yehuda Aryeh ben-Yosef Peratz, whose family reached Italy, was a Talmudist and Kabbalist, rabbi of Venice and Amsterdam in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. He wrote a great number of theological works, notably such as “Seder Kerei Moed” (Venice, 1706), readings on Kabbalah on holidays; “Perach Levanon” (Berlin, 1712), sermons on the Pentateuch; “Shaarei Rahamim” (Venice, 1716) – mystical and Kabbalistic prayers; “Fundamento Solido” (Amsterdam, 1729) – a compendium of Jewish theology in Spanish; “Aseret a-Dvarim” (1737) – an Aramaic translation in verse of chapters 19-20 of Exodus, etc., etc., etc., etc. He was one of the most famous rabbis of his time in Western Europe.
So, as we can see, gradually one of the branches of this family moved further and further north in Europe, from Venice to Holland. Isaac Peretz of Amsterdam is one of the most famous physicians of mid-18th century Europe.
But some descendants continue to live in Turkey and North Africa. A philosopher and writer, Avraham ben-Yaakov Peretz was a Talmudist who lived in Constantinople and Thessaloniki in the early 19th century. Avraham ben-Yaakov wrote Avnei Shoam (Thessaloniki, 1848), a novellae to the Talmud, Maimonides’ codex, and other medieval authors.
Raphael Chaim Benjamin Peretz was the son of Avraham Peretz. He was a famous Turkish rabbinical author. Lived, like his father of late, in Thessaloniki.
Part Three – Poland
One of the branches of the family reached the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth through Venice and Turkey. In 1588, part of the family (together with other natives of Spain and Portugal) settled in Poland, near the city of Lublin, in the town of Zamosc (Zamość). They were the first Jews to arrive there. Only descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jews were allowed to settle in Zamość by special privilege. Among them was the Parets family. Many representatives of the family now, in Russian-Polish transcription, had the surname sounded as Peretz or Peretz. A hundred years later, in the first half of the 17th century, because of the economic crisis and further terrible pogroms of Khmelnitsky, this community actually ceased to exist. The Jews who lived there, for the most part, dispersed throughout what was then Poland. Although some of them, such as the family of Yitzhak Leib Peretz, continued to live there for three more centuries.
Yitzhak Leib (Leibush, Leon) Peretz is an outstanding writer. He is considered, along with Sholom Aleichem and Mendel Moicher-Sforim, the greatest author of Yiddish literature (although he wrote not only in Yiddish, but also in Hebrew). He is now called “the progenitor of Jewish modernism.” The direction he developed in literature was continued, each in his own way, by Isaac Bashevis Singer and Martin Buber. Itzhak Leibush was born in 1851 in Zamość, Lublin province of Poland (by the way, here, exactly 20 years after him, was born the indefatigable communist Rosa Luxemburg, who directed all her temperament in a direction far from the teachings of her fathers). There, in Zamość, Yitzhak’s uncle Moshe Yoshua Heschel Wahl was a rabbi. As the encyclopedists write, “having received a traditional upbringing, Peretz, even in his adolescent years, began to study medieval Jewish philosophy and Kabbalah, which soon gave way to more modern works, along with the Talmud. He learned Polish, Russian, German and French”.
He began to publish at the age of 25 and became a “fervent advocate of jargon”. At that time the secularly educated part of the Jews somewhat disparagingly called Yiddish, which was spoken and read by the overwhelming majority of the Jewish population of Europe, “jargon”. Young Peretz was at that time a supporter of the Yiddish language. And under the influence, apparently, of Jewish chaskala (enlightenment) in his program he solemnly declared the goal: “The enlightenment of the people and the transformation of fanatics into educated people.” As Brockhaus and Efron write in many of his works of the later period “analyzes the pathological state of split personality and dulling of consciousness of the personal “I”. Instead of a proud personality, the poet sees around him a “dead city”, where people do not die, as they never lived. Only in the “ward for the insane” he finds seekers of new ways. Only he, whom everyone recognized as “mad”, dreams of “the times of the Messiah”. But gradually “the romantic dreamer wins in Peretz the skeptical rationalist, and the sarcastic mockery of outdated prejudices is replaced by a mystical dream that “the synagogue should rise up, reach the heavens; it should become higher, with a golden roof and crystal windows, for being so humiliated.” And he becomes a “singer of Hasidism.” (It is interesting, in this connection, to note that his entire extended family, as well as his father, were “mitnagdim,” i.e., ardent opponents of Hasidism).
What Peretz initially regarded with derision became for him a symbol of all that is wonderful. “He contrasts the detachment of the Jewish personality from nature with the harmony of man with nature, with the triumph of the individual who enlivens the surrounding nature with his inner light. He paints the ecstasy of the tzadiks of Bela and Nemirov, majestic in their simplicity. The mystical feeling of the world and its melody in the trembling secrets of the human soul is conveyed by Peretz with amazing penetration”. His first collection of selected works in Hebrew was published in 1901. The next collection of works was published in Warsaw and in America. His works have been translated into Russian, German, Polish, English and many other European languages. During his life Peretz repeatedly started to engage in commerce (he was a co-owner of a brewery, then a mill, became a lawyer and owner of a law office) and every time, just when his business was beginning to flourish, he was again attracted to literature, started a business and went bankrupt. He did not become a famous businessman, but he kept the tradition of the family and “broke through” in another way – he became a classic of Jewish literature. Itzhak Leib Peretz died in Warsaw in 1915.
Another Peretz, or rather Peretz – Adolf, whose family moved from Zamość to Kalisz, Lodz Voivodeship, became a financier, publicist and social activist. He was born in 1855, and at the age of 27 he established a banker’s house in Warsaw, becoming a well-known financier.
Part Four – Russia
One of the Peretz families – Israel Peretz’s family made it to Lewartowo (in the same Lublin province), located 100 kilometers from Zamość. Israel, now Peretz, became a well-known rabbi in Lewartowo. One of our heroes, his son Avraham Peretz (or Abram Peretz – as he will be called in Russia) was born in his family. He was born in 1771 in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and a year later became an Austrian citizen, as this part of Poland was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Abraham received a Jewish education in the house of his rabbi father, after which he entered a yeshiva. At the same time he was constantly interested in foreign languages and so-called “secular sciences”. As the Jewish Encyclopedia notes, Abraham had excellent and rare abilities, not to mention remarkable heredity, and in time he could have become a famous rabbi, Talmudist and researcher. However, he chose a different version of his fate.
At the age of 16, Avraham married the daughter of the famous scientist and philanthropist Yoshua Zeitlin. The biography of his father-in-law is extremely remarkable in itself. Yoshua Tzeitlin, who was born in Shklov in 1742 and lived in this world for 80 years, was a famous Talmudist and philanthropist. He was a student of the famous Rav Aryeh-Leib, author of “Shaagat Aryeh”. While Yoshua possessed amazing erudition in many areas of Judaism, he was also distinguished by his unique business skills. After the first partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772, Shklov became part of the Russian Empire. Joshua managed to establish strong ties with Prince Potemkin and began accompanying him on almost all of his trips to the south of the then developing Russia. Together with him, he was an active participant in the construction of the new southern Russian provincial city of Kherson. At one time he was called the manager of Prince Potemkin’s affairs. (The prince, under the influence of Tseytlin, even intended to create a special Israeli regiment, “arming the Jews against the Turks”).
Eventually Joshua Zeitlin became a prominent contractor and supplier to the Russian court, and made a huge fortune. In 1787 (when most of Poland already belonged to Russia), he was made a court counselor at the Polish Royal Court. But after Potemkin’s death, he withdrew almost completely from the business. At the same time he was left with a huge fortune. Only in one Velizhsky district he owned the fiefdoms of the famous nobles Mordvinov together with 910 serfs. (It is difficult to find another Jew in the Russian Empire who owned almost a thousand serfs).
After retiring from business, he settled in his estate Ustye, Chirikov district, Mogilev province, and built a house there, which contemporaries called a real palace. At his expense there was also built a Beit Midrash, in which Talmudists, who were fully supported by Zeitlin, studied. He generally surrounded himself with scholars, rabbis, collected a huge library, financially supported Jewish writers and doctors. At the same time, “he tirelessly worked in favor of the co-religionists.”
By marrying his daughter Sarah, Abraham also acquired his father-in-law’s extensive connections. For example, on the recommendation of the same Potemkin (who at that time was a favorite of the Russian Empress Catherine the Great), Abraham, being actually still a very young man of twenty-something years, moved to the capital of the Russian state – St. Petersburg, which at that time for a Jew was quite unthinkable. As a result, he became one of the members of the tiny group of Jews who were granted official permission by the authorities to reside in the capital. His wife did not go with him and, together with the children, stayed with her father. In St. Petersburg, at first he represented the financial and commercial interests of his father-in-law, but, being a man of “extraordinary intelligence” and “inordinate energy,” after a short time he opened his own business.
The rapidity of Avraham Peretz’s career in St. Petersburg is amazing. Being “28 years old”, he buys a house from Prince Kurakin at the corner of Nevsky and Bolshaya Morskaya. He rents part of this huge house to Count Palen, the military governor of St. Petersburg. By the way, it was Count Palen was one of the main organizers of the conspiracy and the murder of Paul the First. That Paul the First, on whose orders Abram Peretz in 1801, by the age of thirty, already had the title of “commercial counselor”. It was in this house, on Count Palen’s half of the house, that the secret meetings of the conspirators took place, of which Peretz himself, who had rented this part of the house to the Count, had no idea.
After Paul’s assassination, his son Alexander I, who ascended the Russian throne, expelled Palen from St. Petersburg and the whole house was once again occupied by Abraham Peretz. But he again rented his part of it, this time to a young man, beginning his career as a government official of only the lowest 9th class (out of 12-tenths of classes according to the then “table of ranks”) – that is, the young man was a “titular counselor”. This promising official’s name is Mikhail Speransky. Yes, yes, the same Speransky, whom Napoleon will call “the only bright head in Russia” in 10 years and half-jokingly offer Alexander I to exchange Speransky for some German principality (after which, incidentally, Alexander I immediately sent Speransky into exile). The very future disgraced Count Speransky, advisor and friend of Alexander I, who would draw up a plan for a radical reorganization of the state, the main results of which were to be a constitution and the abolition of serfdom.
At the same time, Grigory (Egor) Kankrin, the son of a Baptist and grandson of Rabbi Kahn-Krein, the future famous Minister of Finance of the Russian State, served as Peretz’s secretary. So we can safely say that Avraham Peretz had a talent for finding the right people and organizing the necessary connections. And as the KEE writes “Peretz kept an open house, and had great connections in the highest circles of Russian society”. His house was visited by many famous people of that time.
He was extremely successful in commercial activities. Together with a Jew who converted to Christianity and received the title of baron, Stieglitz, he signed a contract with the government for the supply of Crimean salt, that is, he became a major merchant. As a contemporary writes “Petersburgers punned: “where there is salt, there is Peretz”. Abraham Peretz also built the first so-called “free boathouse” in Russia (a boathouse is a room for building or repairing ships on the shore). He built three 32-gun frigates and a large transport ship in Kherson, and later two more – “Maria” and “Ingul”. In 1810 he receives a contract for the construction of a new boathouse with all auxiliary facilities, on which he builds a new ship – “Kulm”. As a result, Peretz becomes one of the richest paymasters, shipbuilders and bankers in Russia. As L. Gordon notes “the financial reform of 1810 owes much of its success to the “instructions of the banker Peretz”. And indeed Peretz was practically the shadow author of the main direction of Speransky’s financial reform. Baron Korf wrote about him: “This was a man memorable to many for his merits, for his great deeds and then for his misfortunes”.
But Avraham Peretz was known not only for his financial operations. The Encyclopedia, for example, considers him one of the first “maskilim” (figures of Jewish enlightenment – Haskalah) in Russia. Peretz maintained ties with many figures of the Berlin Haskalah. As the same encyclopedia points out, “his former teacher Yehuda Leib ben-Noah – Nevahovich (the first Jewish literary writer writing in Russian and the grandfather of the famous future biologist, Nobel Prize winner Ilya Mechnikov) came to St. Petersburg together with Peretz and carried out his business errands; in his house lived one of the pioneers of Jewish enlightenment, M. Satanover (the teacher of the elder Yehuda Leib ben-Noah – Nevahovich ). Satanover (the teacher of Hirsch’s eldest son); Peretz gave wide support to the communal petitioners who came to the capital and in fact became one of the leaders of the nascent Jewish community of St. Petersburg. When the Jewish Committee was established to draft legislation on the Jews, Peretz was probably one of the few Jews invited to participate in its meetings.” Most likely, the latter was due to Peretz’s connections with M. Speransky.
Suddenly, Abraham Peretz does something that many of his co-religionists find extraordinary. After the death of his wife Sarah Zeitlin, he converted to Lutheranism and married the German Caroline de Somber. Researchers hold different views on the reasons for this act. The Concise Jewish Encyclopedia believes that perhaps one of the motivating reasons for this was that the “Statute on the Jews” completely “took away from Peretz the hope for emancipation and a better future for the co-religionists in Russia, and he completely withdrew from Jewish affairs”. Other researchers suggest that he was baptized because of love. And some Russian historians, familiar with the trends of Judaism only by hearsay, even see here some mysterious intrigues of the terrible “Hasidic sect”.
We do not know what considerations guided Avraham Peretz. Maybe the most prosaic ones – his own career or the future career of his children in the Russian capital, or maybe he was simply tired of being a white crow among the Russians and carrying the weight of his own Jewish identity. No matter how much we guess now, we cannot answer this question. He did what many of his kind had done in Spain before him, but they usually did it in much more unbearable circumstances. And more often than not, they returned to Judaism at the first opportunity. He did something different. He left Judaism for good, taking his descendants and his entire future lineage out of it. He did what he did.
After a while, fortune turned away from Peretz. He invested huge sums of money in food supplies for the Russian army during the war with Napoleon. But the fire of Moscow and the fact that the state treasury delayed payments and did not pay him for food supplies, led Peretz to the deepest commercial fiasco. His house in St. Petersburg was sold to the merchants Kosikovsky, his house in Nikolayev was sold to the Maritime Department. A police case was opened “On the sale of Peretz’s property to pay off his debt”. All his property was sold for one and a half million rubles (although, as sources indicate, the debt of the treasury to Peretz amounted to four million). Misfortunes followed one after another. Vice-Admiral Greig, appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Black Sea Fleet and military governor of Nikolaev, having checked the work of the Admiralty, found overpayments to the contractor Peretz, and in an order on the Admiralty stated: “Peretz was given a lot of unnecessary money, and there was no success in the construction”. In connection with what, it was ordered to withdraw from the contractor 67 thousand 337 rubles 12 kopecks. The statesman and poet Derzhavin publicly called Peretz a “knave”.
To justify Peretz, an excerpt from a note by Baron V. I. Steingel, submitted to Emperor Nicholas, may be cited: “To my utter amazement, all the actions of the Ministry of Finance in the last ten years were, I may say, terrible …. The natural consequence of this was insolvency – and the buyers are ruined to the end, especially Zlobin, who rendered many services to the fatherland, and Peretz. In the pursuit of these purchasers and then suppliers of provisions there were cases that they submitted their claims to the treasury, but the Minister ordered: “to collect from them, and let them be dealt with in a special way”. An order having the character of complete violence and injustice.” Even Derzhavin, as said above, called Peretz “knave”, still trying to restore justice, interceded in his favor during the consideration of his case in the Senate. However, this did not help the bankruptcy. Abram Peretz was ruined.
The date of Abram Peretz’s death has not yet been precisely determined. In any case, it is known that he died after 1833. Some sources say that he died in 1834, 62 years old. The rapid rise of his star in the Russian sky led to the same rapid fall. He was buried in a Lutheran cemetery. He no longer had anything to do with the faith of his fathers.
Abram Peretz had six children (the difference between the oldest and youngest son was 44 years), all of whom were baptized at different ages. His youngest son by his second wife, Yegor Abramovich Peretz, had the brightest career in Russia. He was born in 1833, already after the bankruptcy and ruin of his father. He was a late child – Abram Peretz was already 62 years old at that time. Yegor graduated from the prestigious law faculty of St. Petersburg University and began his career in the “Second Department of His Imperial Majesty’s Own Chancellery.” As the encyclopedists write “great abilities and the adoption of Christianity opened before him great opportunities”. Yegor Peretz participated in the preparation and writing of several major state reforms – he was even specially sent to Western Europe “to study judicial procedure”. He rose to the rank of an active Privy Counselor (which corresponded then to the military rank of “full general” or admiral) and reached almost to the very top of state power. In different years of his career he held the positions of State Secretary of the State Council, State Secretary and member of the State Council. He was considered an advocate of reform and a liberal. He wrote a famous diary, which is still an important source of information for Russian historians about the internal politics of the Russian Empire in the 80s of the 19th century. We do not know whether he was concerned about the Jewish question – the only thing we know is that in his celebrated Diary he describes the discussions on this issue in the State Council at that time. He died a year before the turn of the century, in 1899, in St. Petersburg.
Another son of Abram Peretz, Alexander, who was born to Sarah Tseytlina in 1812 during Napoleon’s invasion, became a mining engineer, rose to the rank of chief of staff of the Corps of Mining Engineers and as the encyclopedia writes “played a prominent role in the industrial development of the Urals”. Alexander died in 1872. His brother, Nikolai, became director of the Technological Institute.
Peretz’s daughter from his first marriage, Maria (1817-1887), married a collapsed German, becoming the wife of Senator Baron Alexander Grevenitz. Their daughter Sophia married her uncle Yegor Abramovich Peretz.
The fate of Abram Peretz’s eldest son Hirsch is the most ambiguous. Hirsh, later Gregory, was born in 1788 in Dubrovka, Mogilev province. He was brought up by his grandfather, the same famous Yoshua Tzeitlin we described above, on his Ustye estate, among Talmudists, yeshiva students and writers. In 1803, when he was 15 years old, his father took him to his home in St. Petersburg. It is not known what Hirsch would have become if he had continued to live with his famous grandfather, but we know well the fate of Gregory, who continued his studies with his father in St. Petersburg. His father assigned him a home teacher, the famous Mendel Satanover, a connoisseur and lover of Kant, a friend of the philosopher Mendelssohn and one of the pioneers of the Jewish Haskalah.
St. Petersburg, the capital of the Russian State, made a strong impression on the 15-year-old young man. He is enrolled in the office of the State Treasurer. He receives the rank of “titular counselor”. Six years later he already serves in the “Expedition of State Revenue”, then in the Office of Prince Kurakin (whose house was bought by his father), and then in the office of the St. Petersburg military governor-general, the famous hero of the War of 1812, Count Mikhail Miloradovich. Hirsch was eager to join the society around him. He attends fashionable lectures at the Pedagogical Institute, balls, high society companies of the capital. But in 1811 in response to his request to join the elite and prestigious then prestigious Masonic lodge he was denied on the grounds that “the Christian orientation of Freemasonry excludes admission to it Jews. At the age of 25, together with his father, he decided to be baptized. What was behind this action? Maybe the same desire to enter and succeed in the Christian society around him, as in the relatives of his ancestors – Marranos, because not all of them were baptized by force. By the way, those who were forcibly baptized most often returned to the faith of their fathers.
Having been baptized, now not Hirsch, but Grigory Peretz, apparently, received a pass to the then fashionable Masonic lodge, and, however, probably, and not only in it alone. At Miloradovich, whom he serves, he gets acquainted with Fyodor Glinka, a combat officer, a colonel of the Guards, a poet, the future author of the famous romances “Troika” and “I can not hear the noise of the city …”, and most importantly, an active member of the “Union of Salvation” and one of the leaders of the “Union of Welfare. As Felix Kandel writes in his “Book of Times and Events”: “on the recommendation of Fyodor Glinka, he was admitted to the secret circle to which he was led by the “injustices and errors of the government”. “My intentions were solely for the common good…. – he would later tell an investigator after his arrest. – There was no self-interest or ambition. It was I who once said with Glinka that in case of success I should not seek anything, but, on the contrary, to remain in the same position in which the circumstances of the time would catch anyone”.
Grigory Peretz was so imbued with the ideas that were in the air in the Russian capital at that time that he became the only baptized Jew (unbaptized Jews would most likely not have been taken there) who joined the Decembrists’ society. By the way, it was at the suggestion of Grigory Peretz that the word “cherut” (“freedom” in Hebrew) became the password of the secret society. Grigory was so actively involved in this movement that he even suggested founding another secret society independent of the Union of Welfare. He developed such activity that he managed to replenish the ranks of the conspirators by bringing new members into the secret circle – officers Senyavin, Drobusha, Danchenko, General Iskritzky and Ustinovich, who served in the Ministry. According to his claims “all unanimously censured the measures of the Government.” His purpose, as he himself later showed at the inquest, was “to spread general displeasure by making public the injustice and errors of the government”, but at the same time, according to him, “there was never any talk of a republican government for Russia in my time; I would always consider it the greatest folly”.
At the same time, it was Grigory Peretz, as many researchers believe, who drew the Decembrists’ attention to the Jewish question in the future ideal well-being of society. It should be noted that, apparently, the views of Peretz and the “most enlightened part of Russian society,” which was represented by the Decembrists at that time, diverged somewhat on this issue. In principle, of course, the Decembrists, busy with the “salvation of the fatherland” along with other issues were going to solve somehow the Jewish question. As F. Kandel points out: “…the Decembrist Spiridov suggested that Jews, like other non-Christians, should not enjoy civil rights in the future transformed society, and Nikita Muravyev wrote in the first edition of his “Constitution”: “Jews can enjoy the rights of citizens in the places now inhabited by them, but their freedom to settle in other places will depend on special resolutions of the Supreme People’s Assembly”. It seems to us that it is worth to touch upon this issue a little more closely and give a lengthy quote from the draft program of the “Southern Society”, which was headed by the famous Pavel Pestel. Here is what Pestel wrote in the 14th paragraph of the 2nd chapter of his “Russian Truth”, entitled “The Jewish People”:
“The Jews have a faith of their own, which assures them that they are predestined to conquer and possess all other nations; and by this means it separates them from all other nations, makes them despise all other nations, so to speak, and makes any mixture with any other nation absolutely forbidden and impossible.
While waiting for the Messiah, the Jews consider themselves to be temporary inhabitants of the region where they are, and therefore they do not want to cultivate the land, they even partly despise craftsmen, and they mostly engage in trade alone. Because of their large number, honest trade cannot provide sufficient subsistence for all, and therefore there are no deceptions and falsehoods that they would not allow themselves, in which the Rabbis help them even more, saying that it is not a crime to deceive a Christian, and basing on their law the right to swear false oaths, if only it can be useful for a Jew.
The friendly connection between them has the consequence that once they are admitted to a place, they will inevitably become monopolists and will displace all others. This can be clearly seen in the provinces where they have their residence. All trade there is in their hands, and there are few peasants there who would not be in their power through debts, which is why they ruin the region where they live in a terrible way.
…The former government granted them many excellent rights and privileges which increase the evil they do….. Taking all these circumstances into full consideration, it can be clearly seen that the Jews constitute their own special, quite separate state in the state, so to speak, and moreover nowadays in Russia they enjoy more rights than Christians themselves.
If Russia does not expel the Jews, it is all the more important that they should not make themselves hostile to Christians. The Russian government, although it gives protection and favor to every person, but, however, it must first of all think about the fact that no one can oppose the state order, private and public welfare.
This is how the Decembrist Pestel envisioned the “Jewish tribe”. After the victory of the uprising, he intended to “convene the most learned rabbis and the smartest Jews, listen to their ideas” and somehow still solve this notorious “Jewish question”, apparently hoping that the Jews would listen to the voice of reason, stop being so terrible and become worthy citizens of the new state. It is interesting that he had another, so to speak, “reserve” variant of the solution of this problem, offered to him, as some researchers believe, by Grigory Peretz. However, let us give the floor to Pestel himself:
“The second method depends on special circumstances and the particular course of foreign affairs, and consists in assisting the Jews to establish a special separate state in some part of Asia Minor. For this purpose it is necessary to appoint a gathering point for the Jewish people and to give them some troops to reinforce them. If all Russian and Polish Jews gather at one place, there will be over two million of them. It will not be difficult for such a number of people seeking a homeland to overcome all the obstacles that the Turks may oppose to them, and, having passed through the whole of European Turkey, to go to Asian Turkey and there, having occupied sufficient places and lands, to establish a special Jewish state. But since this enormous enterprise requires special circumstances and truly ingenious enterprise, it cannot be made an indispensable duty of the Provisional Supreme Government, and it is mentioned here only for the purpose of giving hints of all that could be done.
As the historian S. Svatikov points out: “Peretz repeatedly told F. Glinka about the need to found a society for the liberation of Jews… Peretz’s father, Abram Peretz, had the same idea, but for this, in their opinion, it was necessary to establish a society of capitalists and to get the assistance of scientists”. F. Kandel in his book cites the testimony given by Glinka at the interrogation – “Peretz sang a lot about the need for a society to release the Jews scattered across Russia and even Europe, and to settle them somewhere in the Crimea or even in the East in the form of a separate people …. Here he sang about how to gather the Jews, with what triumphs to lead them, etc., etc.” How did the famous Fyodor Glinka react to these proposals? That Fyodor Glinka, whom Pushkin called “a magnanimous citizen,” J. Tolstoy “a defender of the suffering, a zealot of pure truth,” and A. Turgenev “indefatigable in goodness”? In his memoirs Glinka writes that when he heard from Peretz about his father’s dream (despite all the Christianity he had adopted) to gather all of Jewry in a new state, he cried out: “Yes, it appears that you want to bring about the end of the world? They say that the Scriptures say (I hardly knew the Scriptures then) that when the Jews are set free, the light will end!”
And then there was this – Peretz, apparently, gradually cooled down or became disillusioned with the Decembrists. As F. Kandel writes: “Grigory Peretz was a member of the secret circle until 1822, and then married and withdrew from the conspirators. “You have in your head love, not business” – reprimanded him Glinka. December 14, 1825, the day of the uprising, he heard on the street, as one of the officers persuaded the soldiers to go to the Senate Square and not to swear Nicholas. Instead of Senate Square, Peretz went home and after the suppression of the uprising he was sure that he would be arrested. He even wanted to flee abroad, asked Iskritsky not to mention his name in case of arrest, but the latter finally reported at the interrogation: “I was admitted to the society … titular counselor Grigory Peretz.” Peretz was arrested in February 1826 with the instruction to “keep strictly”. He immediately confessed to everything and even asked the investigators to torture him “to convince them of the truth of my testimony.
However, to be fair, it should be noted that Grigory Peretz was not the only one who behaved in this way during interrogations. Moreover, there were not many Decembrists among the 289 accused (except for Lunin, who got into this whole story quite by chance, as well as Yakushkin, Borisov, and several others) who would not have betrayed all their comrades. “I was not admitted by anyone to the secret society, but joined it myself,” replied Lunin to the investigators. – To reveal their names (members of the society) I consider it repugnant to my conscience, for I should have discovered my brothers and friends”. The overwhelming majority of Decembrists did not think so, they wrote detailed confessions, penitential letters, some begged for forgiveness. Torture, in spite of Peretz’s assiduous requests, as far as we know, was not applied to any of them, and they named their friends of their own free will.
Later historians put forward more than one explanation for this, including such exotic ones as “some of the former conspirators were guided by the code of noble honor, which prescribed to be frank with the sovereign” (although, as we can see, in the example of Lunin, this very noble honor was understood differently by everyone, and not every one of them was honored with an interrogation by the sovereign-emperor himself); others “wished to draw the attention of the authorities to the need to solve problems in society by naming as many participants as possible”. So Grigory Peretz was not alone in his zeal. At the same time, it was to him, as F. Kandel writes, “The authorities showed … increased interest, clearly not corresponding to his modest role in the case. Many members of the secret circle, who withdrew with Peretz from the conspirators, were not punished at all. To Fyodor Glinka the Tsar said: “You are clean, you are clean,” and he was exiled to Petrozavodsk to continue his service “on the civil side.” General Iskritsky was transferred as an officer to an army regiment, and only Peretz was given a stricter punishment than his former comrades – like-minded people: life exile. The sentence read: “After two more months in the fortress, send him to live in Perm, where the local police should have vigilant secret supervision over him and report monthly on his behavior.”
Grigory spent a total of six months in the Peter and Paul Fortress. He was threatened with Perm for life. Researchers’ opinions on such a harsh sentence differ. Some believe that the role of Peretz in the uprising was deliberately exaggerated (after all, he withdrew from the Decembrists three years before the uprising), some, like F. Kandel suggest that “perhaps revenge was taken on an ungrateful peasant who had received all the rights, was allowed into high society and, nevertheless, became a conspirator and criticized the existing order …”. But be that as it may, the verdict was passed – Peretz was exiled, as F. Kandel writes, “to Perm, from there even farther away, to the small town of Ustsysolsk, in the middle of nowhere, where he lived for fourteen years with his wife and small sons. There his wife died, there he learned poverty, hunger and cold, dressed in rags, – there he also fell ill with epilepsy. Only in 1840 he received permission to move to Vologda, and in 1845 – in Odessa. A year later (and after 16 years since the death of his first wife) he married Elizabeth Antonova. There in Odessa, in the last years of his life he was lucky – he was able to engage in commerce and improve his financial situation: like his father, he became a middleman, began to trade in salt. In Odessa he had another son, whom he baptized, as well as the previous ones. Grigory Peretz died in 1855 at the age of 67.
Not much is known about one of Grigory Peretz’s sons, Nikolai. We only know that he was a teacher. But his son Vladimir, born in 1870, became one of the most famous researchers of Old Russian literature. He became an academician of the St. Petersburg (in 1914) and Ukrainian (in 1919) Academies of Sciences. In addition to his famous study of the Tale of Igor’s Campaign, he created a number of works not always mentioned in Russian literary studies for some reason. He published in his time a very interesting work on the Judaizers and on the influence of medieval Jewish literature on Russian literature. In particular, he researched “Megilat Rut” (where, as we wrote above it is indicated: “…and here is the chronicle of the house of Peretz”). And publishing, for example, materials for the history of the Apocrypha, he even gave parallel Slavonic and Jewish texts.
Apparently, all the same, the memories of his Jewish ancestors, though indirectly, but worried Vladimir Nikolaevich. Together with his brother Lev, he wrote and published in 1926 a book about his grandfather with an unusual title for the Russian ear “Decembrist Grigory Abramovich Peretz”. In the 30’s he, like many talented literary scholars, was subjected to repression, was expelled from the Academy of Sciences and sentenced to exile. By the way, as Ya. S. Lurie in his book “The Story of One Life”, describing the decency inherent in Vladimir Peretz – “In the past a member of the Union of the Russian People, (the famous Black Hundred organization) N. С. Derzhavin became after the revolution rector of the University, head of the group of “leftist professors”, and later – and a member of the party. It was said that when Derzhavin dismissed from the University graduate student of the Department of Russian Literature Nikolskaya on the grounds that her father was a prominent monarchist, Nikolskaya’s supervisor, V. N. Peretz, sent the rector a brief note: “Dear Nikolai Sevastyanovich, some bastard dismissed from the University Nikolskaya, the daughter of your comrade in the Union of the Russian People. I hope that you will help her…”. Nikolskaya was reinstated.
In general, Vladimir Peretz was a man who firmly defended his views, despite the fact that they were in many ways at odds with the scientific and Soviet “mainstream” that was contemporary to him. As N. V. Izmailov writes in his memoirs, “Vladimir Nikolayevich Peretz resolutely avoided a short-term at least directorship. And the reason for this is clear: V. N. Peretz is the only one … considered possible scientific study of Russian literature only up to Kantemir (ending with the Petrine epoch). Further, in his opinion, scientific research gave way to subjectivist and impressionist criticism, and a science of literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was impossible. He considered Pushkin studies to be outside the boundaries of science and therefore was extremely skeptical of the works of N. A. Kotlyarevsky, B. L. Modzalevsky and others, and of the Pushkin House as a whole – not only skeptical, but directly hostile, as a useless and easy fun, a waste of money and effort.
On April 11, 1934 he was arrested by the OGPU in the so-called “Slavists’ case”. As M. Robinson and D. Petrovsky write, “the fact that the “Slavists’ case” did not go well is evidenced by the fact that the cases of six academicians, qualified by OGPU investigators as the “political center” of the Russian National Party (RNP): M. S. Grushevsky, M. N. Speransky, N. S. Kurnakov, V. I. Vernadsky, N. S. Derzhavin, and V. N. Peretz, were assigned to “separate proceedings”. But only Speransky and Peretz were arrested. It should be noted that the two academicians were arrested after all the main participants of the allegedly led by them “conspiracy” were convicted”. At the same time, of course, they were both expelled from the Academy and deprived of the title of academician. Here is a reference from the so-called “Special Folder”: “To accept the proposal of the OGPU on the exclusion of academicians Speransky and Peretz, accused in the case of counter-revolutionary fascist organization, from the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and their expulsion for three years”. Vladimir Peretz died in 1935, in exile, in Saratov.
Much more is known about the other son of Gregory Peretz, named, as it is customary among Christians, in honor of his own father also Gregory, unlike Nicholas. The historian O. Abakumov managed to restore his service record. Grigory Grigorievich Peretz was born in 1823 in St. Petersburg (just a year after his father withdrew from his “Decembrist” activities). In 1840 he graduated from gymnasium and entered St. Petersburg University (at that time his father had long since arrived in exile). From the third year he left the university and entered the service in the Commissariat Department of the Military Ministry, but without a salary. This means “listed in the service”. Four years later, he retired and got a teacher of “Russian language and diction in the Main Engineering School”. Then – teaches at the Construction School, works in the editorial office of the newspaper “Severnaya Pochta”.
And suddenly a sharp turn, it would seem, already definitively failed career. Since January 11, 1869 Peretz became an official for special assignments at the Ministry of the Interior, and since 1872 he was already an official for special assignments of the III Gendarmerie Department (then the secret police)! And stayed in this position for a number of years. To understand the strange and unexpected turn of this career, one should look closely at the very personality of Grigory Peretz. As the same Abakumov points out – “in his younger years Peretz gained the reputation of “a convinced Westerner and a zealous admirer of Belinsky and Herzen”. The famous lawyer A. F. Koni recalls Grigory as his brother’s mentor – “[he] brought with him “Bell” and “Polar Star”, preaching to us, the need to overthrow the state system and drown the existing order in blood …, recited us revolutionary poems and songs, some of which we learned from his words. In the 1860s, Peretz becomes a member of the circle of D. V. Stasov. As the historian writes, “it was there that the idea was born to submit an address to the Tsar to pardon those arrested during the student riots. An attempt to implement it led to the arrest and imprisonment of Stasov in the III Department.
Apparently, at the same time, concludes O. Abakumov “Peretz also came to the attention of the political police”. In any case, we know one thing for sure – in 1862 Grigory went to the World’s Fair in London with a certain task, (according to the then Minister of the Interior P. A. Valuyev) “to get closer” to the famous London exiles and dissidents Herzen and Ogarev. M. I. Perper quotes excerpts from the correspondence of the Russian Embassy in London with the secret police department. One of the letters speaks of Peretz as a man who “volunteered to serve the fatherland,” while another notes that the embassy tries to “bind and compromise Peretz with receipts for money. Most likely, according to Abakumov, this was indeed “his first espionage action to closely supervise A. I. Herzen and N. P. Ogarev”.
And Peretz carried it out to perfection. He managed to visit Herzen’s house several times, to make a list of his regular guests, to bring him articles for “Kolokol” and to make a pleasant impression on Herzen. Herzen would later write about him: “He seems to be a very good and educated man.” Peretz also managed to find out and report to the Third Department about all the ways of illegal delivery of the red-hot and forbidden “Kolokol” to Russia. “All this allowed the leadership of the III Department, – as the historian writes – in all-subjects report for 1862 to state: “Caution required to establish in London the closest secret surveillance of both political natives and their visitors. The measures taken on this subject have been a complete success. One person sent from here for this purpose, managed to gain the trust of Herzen and Bakunin, who after some time, seeing in him a useful accomplice in the cause of the revolution, explained to him the program conceived by them”. On his return from London, Peretz was subjected to a special public search at the customs house (so as not to “light up” the agent) and his papers were confiscated. It was these papers, as Abakumov further writes, that led to numerous arrests and were used as material evidence in the famous “Process of 32”. And the main thing is that after some suspicions of betrayal, the revolutionaries decided that “Peretz,” in the words of Herzen, “is clean”.
So, was it conscious espionage “against the enemies of the fatherland”, or was it simply Peretz, caught by the Gendarme Department for excessive free talk and remembering the fate of his unfortunate father, frightened and became a provocateur? History is silent about this. However, we know that rarely any provocateur rose to the rank of “official for special assignments at the Ministry of the Interior”. The historian M. K. Lemke calls G. G. Peretz an “agent-informant”. S. A. Reiser – “traitor”, adding that “his biography is still not very clear. Its various sides have not been brought together or even identified”. It is possible that Peretz was both one, and the other, and the third. According to O. Abakumov “G. G. Peretz was one of the first agents of the political police, embedded in the ranks of the radical opposition. His activity was reduced not only to the superficial collection of information, but also to active work in the observed environment. The appearance of such secret agents marked the beginning of a new stage in the development of political investigation. At the same time, the same researcher, apparently taking into account this aspect of Gregory’s career, doubts his sincerity when he sends a petition to Alexander II for “mitigation of the fate of 70-year-old elder, my father: “It is not for a son to judge his father! I don’t even know his guilt…”. But whoever he was and whatever role he played in the Russian revolutionary movement, we have absolutely no reason to suspect him of disliking his own father. Grigory Grigorievich Peretz died in 1883, having outlived his Decembrist father by 28 years.
In general, the history of this once Jewish family has an unhappy continuation. Another son of the Decembrist vykrest Grigoriy Peretz, Peter, became a well-known thief in Odessa, made numerous foreign “tours”, invariably returning from them with looted “junk”. As they write V. R. Feitelberg-Blank and V. Shestachenko in their book “Bandit Odessa” – “in 1852 in Odessa prison gets 35-year-old Peter Peretz, a thief-domushnik, criminal authority. He was the son of the only Jewish Dekabrist Grigory Peretz. Pyotr, a man of great physical strength, beat up prisoners he did not like, broke furniture, started a fire and wounded a guard. His word was law in prison. He was shot while trying to escape in 1859, four years after his father’s death.
So sadly ended the history of one of the branches of this Jewish family. The descendants of the sages and Marrans, who “tore the veil of existence” and were burned for the faith of their fathers, turned into Odessa crooks, breaking furniture and tearing only other people’s wallets and their own handcuffs.
Part Six – Morocco
Perhaps the largest branch of the Peretz family from Andalusia, having emigrated from Spain, ended up in Morocco. Without even trying to merge with the local Jews (and they were not particularly eager to embrace the newcomers – the difference in culture and mentality between them was too great), the Perets, having formed, bought a large plot of land from the king of Morocco. It was located south of the Atlas Mountains in the Dades Valley, just where the Berbers lived. They built two settlements on it – Dades, near the fortress with the same name and near the almost legendary kazba of Teluit, located high in the mountains. Teluit in general became the center of this area, which was gradually densely populated by Jews. The Parets were the ruling clan of the entire region until 1672, before Ismail Ibn Sharif ascended to the throne of Morocco. They lived extremely compactly in these localities – leaving them mostly only in connection with commercial affairs or moving to other cities and countries to become rabbis there. The majority of their marriages were intermarriages.
Among the famous members of the Peretz family is Rabbi Shlomo (Solomon) Peretz, author of the commentary to the book of the Zohar. His family, which fled to Morocco, was one of the richest families in Castile. From Morocco, he migrated to Tunisia. His son moved from Tunisia to Italy.
His grandson, Yuda Aryeh Leon Peretz, was a famous preacher and rabbi who lived in the 18th century. Yuda Aryeh Leon made his way to Greece and there married the granddaughter of the famous Talmudist Michael Cohen of Thessaloniki. His life was full of adventures: he was shipwrecked, was a prisoner in Naples, lived in the congregations of Leghorn, Venice, where he became the chief preacher of the Ashkenazi community, succeeding his relative Isaac Cavallero. (By the way, the astute reader will probably note how relative this division between Ashkenazi and Sephardic is). Yuda Aryeh Leon lived in Prague, Colin, and Amsterdam. He wrote numerous works on the fundamental principles of Judaism.
From Morocco there were also famous rabbis – Rabbi Mesod Peretz of Safi and Rabbi Yehuda Peretz of Dadesh.
Aaron ben-Avraham Peretz of Fez in Morocco, Talmudist and rabbi, settles on the island of Djerba. The same island where, in 1560, the famous Turgut Reis erected the terrible tower of Borj el-Rus from the skulls of five thousand Spaniards who had been captured during the battle for the island. Aharon ben-Avraham lived on this island, where the descendants of the tribe of Zvulon and then the Kohen from Morocco had once sailed. He wandered through the labyrinth of narrow streets in the Old City and prayed in that ancient synagogue of the Grib, built by the Jews 27 centuries ago – in 584 B.C., four years after the fall of Jerusalem at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, and which still holds the oldest lists of the Torah. Aharon ben-Avraham wrote the Bigdei Aharon, a mystical commentary on the Torah interpreting passages from the Book of the Prophets, as well as the Mishkhat Aharon and a commentary on the Talmud in Djerba. He died after 1761.
At present, about 20,000 descendants of the Peretz branch from Morocco and Turkey, bearing the same surname, live in Israel. Among them are, among others, rabbi and minister, one of the founders of the Shas party – Yitzhak Haim Peretz, born in Casablanca, Knesset members Yitzhak Peretz (recently deceased) and Yair Peretz, as well as Amir (Armand) Peretz, son of the head of the Jewish community of Bojad in Morocco, IDF reserve captain, former trade union boss, head of the Avoda party (Labor Party) and former Israeli Defense Minister (in 2006).
Part Seven – Conclusion
Representatives of this family, like the Marranos who managed to escape the persecution of the Inquisition and the Jews who did not change their faith and were expelled from Spain, reached the shores of Latin America, Africa, Turkey, Western and Eastern Europe. If we analyze the many fates of the members of the Perets family, living at the moment on five continents, who never abandoned the faith of their ancestors and did not depart from the main line of the family or its dominant, we will find a rather rigid pattern. This revealed regularity consists in the fact that during the last at least six hundred years neither the destinies of people of this lineage, nor the spheres of activity they are engaged in, nor their social behavior, nor the main features of their characters and aspirations have undergone significant changes. The panotype of this lineage is clearly enough traced, apparently, firmly transmitted to descendants for at least three thousand years. The actual testimonies from TANAH coincide with the known data about the behavior, social status, inclinations and intentions of the members of this family, recorded in much later times, up to modern times. Most of the living descendants and continuers of the lineage continue to carry on the basic tasks or functions of the lineage unknowingly rather than consciously.
We paid much attention to the description of the historical context of the existence of the Peretz family in order to emphasize the invariability of the behavior of the representatives of this family against the background of events of different countries and epochs. The analysis of all these data gives us the opportunity to summarize the fates and activities of the representatives of this branched family and leads us to the following conclusions.
In Tanakhic Israel we see the ruling clan of the Peretzim, the charismatic kings of Israel in the traditional sense, organizing the nation, leading it to political, economic and spiritual prosperity.
In Spain and Latin America, the Peretz clan becomes one of the most economically powerful families of the kingdom, and later of the colonies. At the same time, they have a sufficient measure of adaptability and survivability – they coexist with the Moors, the Visigoths, the Christian rulers of the peninsula, and the Indians of South America. Possessing great power, the representatives of this clan and their descendants did not lose their social orientation – from endeavors aimed at alleviating the fate of their people to caring for other peoples humiliated by the colonial regime; this almost messianic task can be traced in the fates of various representatives of this clan.
In Poland and the Russian Empire, the Peretzes appear in the same “roles”. The economic genius of Abram Peretz in Russia and Alfred Peretz in Poland are combined with messianic plans for the resettlement of Jews in Eretz Israel and revolutionary activities to ease Russian life. The flourishing of Yiddish literature in the work of Isaac Leib Peretz is combined with the activities for the development of Russian literature of Vladimir Peretz.
In Morocco, the influential Spanish clan that started a new life “from scratch” did not dissolve in the new environment. They led communities and were the economic and spiritual leaders of local Jewry. They carried this quality through the centuries, and when they returned to Israel, they did not lose it. Perhaps there is no other Jewish clan that has produced so many social ministers and politicians in the short history of the State of Israel.
Israeli researcher David Peretz rightly notes that this family in all historical epochs has been characterized by such qualities as the desire for power, a strong desire to achieve something in life, to become the best, as well as autonomy, independence and practicality. We can add that the Perets have a delicate balancing act between opportunism and duty and a keen sense of justice.
And indeed, looking into the fates and characters of the representatives of different branches of this numerous family, living in the last five centuries in the environment of different cultures and peoples, regardless of their kinship and, naturally, geographical distance from each other, we can state that the panotype of the metaclan of the family has not undergone significant changes during this time. It is interesting, by the way, that the Perets almost always (except for some exceptional cases) chose no more than four spheres of activity for self-realization. They included and include first of all:
- finance or commerce (financiers, famous businessmen, bankers),
- public activities (community leaders or heads of communities, high government officials), as well as
- Research and literary activities (well-known rabbinic theologians, researchers and, in particular, writers with strong philosophical and social views).
So, as we can see, the members of this famous family, persistently achieve their goals, regardless of the historical situation in which they exist. As Kushner said – “Times do not choose, they live and die in them. Every age, it is an age of iron…”. Even after becoming Marranos, the vast majority of them returned to Judaism at the first opportunity. Analyzing their biographies more closely, one can notice that a certain desire to break out of the existing framework around them, to break through (Lifroz) beyond the boundaries of the possible or seemingly predestined, remained forever a dominant feature or destiny of the representatives of this family.